Behind the growth of the biggest race event in Asia
Attracting close to 73,000 runners, the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon (SCHKM) is the biggest race event in Asia.
Organised by the Hong Kong Amateur Athletic Association (HKAAA), the event offers a marathon, half marathon, 10 kilometre, and wheelchair race, the began in 1997, when 1,073 participants ran the first Hong Kong Marathon from Hong Kong to Shenzhen.
Having held its 19th edition in January this year, the SCHKM is now a signature international sporting event, recognised as a Silver Label Road Race by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), and backed as a special ‘Brand Hong Kong Event’ by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government.
Commenting on the growth of the event, HKAAA Executive Director Dennis Ng explains “when the race was first introduced in Hong Kong, most participants were running it competitively and trying to set PBs.
“Then in the early 2000s, people became more concerned about their health and running for fitness became a priority.
“I think that was a big part of helping the race grow - we nearly tripled in size in 2003.
“On the other hand, Standard Chartered became our title sponsor since 1997 and their brand helped us (so that) within five or six years, SCHKM became very well known locally and then started to attract a lot of overseas runners.”
Relying on ACTIVE Network’s technology and industry expertise, Ng recalls the motivation for working with ACTIVE, stating “the overwhelming response from local and overseas runners was a major burden on our previous registration system.
“We used a local Hong Kong IT vendor and consistently had problems with registration and payments (leaving) our secretariat to do a lot of follow-up work to verify the payments of every participant and deal with inquiries from runners about the status of their registration.
“We did some research and learned that ACTIVE Network had a more advanced system and resources. ACTIVE’s system combined online registration and payments, which is what we were looking for.
“Runners now know immediately if they have registered successfully and we didn’t receive any complaints this year.
“It was a big improvement in the registration experience.”
As for SCHMK’s status as ‘rush sell-out’ event, Ng concludes “we metered the online traffic by opening up registration for SCHKM in four phases—people registered for the marathon at a different time than people registering for the half marathon, and so forth.
“This helped us keep the system from being overwhelmed by tens of thousands of people trying to sign up at once.”
Looking to the future, Ng concludes “next year we’d like to explore the online merchandising feature and see what we can do to get our official partners and sponsors involved, which could be really beneficial.
“We wanted to do it for 2014, but time was running out. We’d also like to increase online interaction by running a Facebook campaign and testing some email marketing to our 2014 database.”
The 2016 Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon will be the 20th edition of the event.
For more information on the SCHKM go to www.hkmarathon.com/#
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